RPGM and Jealousy

[amerk]

Why does it annoy you if others make a profit off something "simple", something you feel is not up to your own standards? That is jealousy, too, and it's not productive.

If somebody put in little to no effort into their "simple" game, chances are high it's not profitable. From a consumer's standpoint, it doesn't bother me. I can choose to ignore those games and look elsewhere. However, from a developer's standpoint, I understand the frustration this causes for various reasons:

1. If you have 1 crappy game and 9 well designed games, it wouldn't be a problem. However, the majority of these games are crap, with no effort made except to scam somebody out of a few bucks, and generally these games don't ever profit. They clutter up the hosting sites and sit there for all to see. Whenever a good game comes along, it gets buried beneath the sludge. Most people are not willing to sift through dozens of crud to find the one gem. If they see one crappy RM game after another, they're going to eventually give up and think all RM games are the same way.

2. The real developer that put in effort to make their game the best they can in hopes of a profit suffers the most. Why? Because most amateurs who posts ****ty games usually don't care enough about their game to make it sell, and because they spent hardly any time or effort on it in the first place. But the true developer who hoped to make something valuable - more than likely they put all their time, energy, resources, and potentially money into making their game, and for nothing in return.

3. Quite often, opinions are based off the opinions of others, and if a mass amount of people begin to talk about all the crappy RM games, others are easily caught up into the thought process and begin thinking the same way, even though they may never have seen or played an RM game in their life.

So yes, I agree with Archeia 100%. I'm not a commercial developer, but I am most definitely a gamer. And as a consumer, I go where it is most convenient. If I go to a site or a store that is cluttered with crap, I'll go look somewhere else. Meanwhile, those developers with real products to sell suffer because they weren't given an opportunity to reach out to me as a customer.

 

[Galenmereth]

I'd rather fight against games that think they can get away with it instead of letting it be and encourage people to do it. Since lol, who cares about making proper games when you can get money?

I agree with that, and like I mentioned I've seen how ugly this "for profit" mindset can end up on the AppStore and Google Play marketplaces... Just so I'm clear, I'm not saying everyone should make free games – heavens no – but neither do I agree with people who make something just to get people's money with no regard for providing a good product.

My comment earlier, about jealousy, was more about being angry about people earning money on "simple" games that do not do much custom stuff; that isn't necessarily bad in my opinion. But I see that I probably misunderstood you, and what you meant was devs that earn money without really caring about their game or their users. That I have an issue with, and agree completely with

 

[Archeia]

I actually think the RTP can be good for commercial venture if you can make the game blend well with the RTP graphics itself. I have no issues with those games since I think the RTP is a legit material that should be abused if it'll help you achieve your dream game.

plus, it's legal.

 

[amerk]

If you mean "simple" as in a well designed game that harkens back to the earlier era of gaming (8-bit, 16-bit, retro platformers, 2D rpg's similar to the earlier Zeldas, Secret of Manas, or Final Fantasies), then yes, I agree. Those games were simple, but a lot of fun, and didn't require outlandish 3D/HD graphics.

Simple games, even flash games, can be fun. But it's still just as important to realize where the market is. For example, most people on Steam Greenlight will downvote a Flash, iOS game, or Android game, not because they hate those game, but because they believe they are better suited elsewhere. To some degree, it's elitist, but elitist attitudes can easily prevail, and as a developer you would want to take your game where it will be most profitable, even if that means excluding it from Steam.

However, when referring to RM games, most often "simple" means out of the box defaults without being able to utilize them well enough, no changes to the database or starting characters, crappy maps or sample maps with no changes, slapping a few events on them, and a tacky title that took no time at all and shows zero creativity.

 

[Galenmereth]

I'm using the RTP as much as I can myself. My other game project (currently on pause) is a platform puzzler where I made most of the engine myself, drew all the pixel art myself, made all sound effects myself, and had a friend help me with music. It's awesome to make something 100% custom, but there are drawbacks too.

The obvious one is development time, especially if you're a mostly one-man team (something I want to be for at least my two current projects, due to their nature). But another challenge, which I feel isn't mentioned enough, is restraint; when you have the ability to make everything yourself to a satisfying degree of quality (and I am happy with my simplistic graphics for that game) then you have far less limits in what you can do, other than pure art skills, which can always be pushed further. It's very easy to come up with a new object and draw it, and keep on doing that more and more even though you ought to restrict yourself more in terms of art assets if you want to get anywhere. This might be a personal challenge, of course; you can limit yourself by a game design document, or other organizational tools, but that just doesn't work for me. I can't sit down in advance and foresee what I need to draw and what kind of areas I want before I start making things and "feeling" the game.

So when I wanted to make an RPG, I didn't want to go with the "semi 8 bit" style I use in that platform game; it wasn't sufficient to tell the story. And I knew some facts in the start:

1. I would need quite a lot of art assets in a semi 16 bit style
2. I would need many different character models
3. I would need a lot of music and sfx
4. I would need an editor that would make it relatively easy to put everything together, with means of eventing, map design and conversational trees
5. I would need a 2D rpg engine

And I realized that if I were to make everything from scratch, I'd spend a year or more on just getting started. Even if I found an engine and made all the art and sounds from scratch, it would still take a long time. And that – together with the scripting aspect – is why I ended up with RM VXAce; it lets me focus more on actually making a game and a story, and I have a huge library to use as a great foundation for the art and sound aspects, which I can build on more easily because it's also a great "design guideline" due to its huge variation in objects that all fit within the same general style.

So yeah, I hope people will accept a game made with a ton of RTP assets, because it's the only feasible way for me to make my current game a reality

 

[Zeriab]

To the Moon was not greenlit. It was accepted before Greenlight.
I think the same holds true for Cherry Tree High Comedy Club though I am not certain about that.

Currently Alpha Kimori and You Are Not the Hero are greenlit. I do not know if other RPG Maker games have been greenlit.


I enjoyed La Tale quite a lot a couple of years ago. I didn't know it was on Greenlight, but would have voted had I known. La Tale has been greenlit btw.

As I see it, the main problem with Greenlight is that most players don't bother with it. Rather it's like there are certain types of players who vote for many games and fans voting for specific games. I would expect the statistics to be skewed as a result. In which I don't really know, but well... the danger of the heuristics guiding in a wrong direction looks high.

*hugs*

 - Zeriab

 

[amerk]

To the Moon was not greenlit. It was accepted before Greenlight.

I think the same holds true for Cherry Tree High Comedy Club though I am not certain about that. 

True, however, To the Moon is often referred to and highly praised, even amongst the Greenlight crowd, as an exception to a very good game designed with RPG Maker, primarily because it doesn't come off looking like an RM game.

As I see it, the main problem with Greenlight is that most players don't bother with it. Rather it's like there are certain types of players who vote for many games and fans voting for specific games. I would expect the statistics to be skewed as a result. In which I don't really know, but well... the danger of the heuristics guiding in a wrong direction looks high.

If I remember correctly, the majority of Steam players don't bother with Greenlight, the very system that Greenlight is intended for, since they are the ones that can best decide which games they want to play. Instead, you're left with a small following of dedicated players, a ton of trolls who probably never intend to buy the games that come out of Greenlight and, as you rightly stated, the fans who simply vote for a specific game and may or may not buy it (depending on if the game is released elsewhere and they already own it and don't care about Steam achievements).

Then you're left with the fact that well less than 35% of the games that have been greenlit have been released, and that the majority of games that get voted on are incomplete and will never see the light of day.

Not to mention, when the system first started up, there was only about 15 pages of games to vote on, somewhere around 400 to 500 games. Now there's almost 50 pages worth of games (around 1500 total) waiting for votes, and what newbie wants to come in and sort through that mess?

 

[EtphTheElephant]

Welp, not going near steam any time soon after reading this xD

 

[Aceri]

Welp, not going near steam any time soon after reading this xD

Steam itself isn't bad, Etph. What everyone dislikes about greenlight is that when it first came out, everybody and their mother basically did nothing but throw sample maps together and tie in a very loose story at best to tie those maps together in the RM programs, and everybody realized those games were crap. So now, if you want an RM game to be approved on greenlight, because of all the bad past experiences, you HAVE to make your RM game look and feel as un-RM as possible, which in turn means that those of us who actually take pride in making a good RM game will be shunned because of the people who wanted to make a quick few bucks off of a crap product.

 

[Pugh95Bear]

Gotta love over excited idiots that ruin it for the rest of us :/.

 

[deaddrift]

im sorry the haters got you down man, but you got to shake them off and ride the lighting!!

lol, what i mean to say is, no matter where you go, or what you do, a certain percentage of the population are going to be a$$holes.  there is no way getting around it.

be confident in your skills and laugh at the trolls.

people are saying alot about the bad rep RPGM games get due to early crappy games, so we all have to work that much harder to make our games great so we can reverse that type of thinking!



be positive and you will be ok!

 

[Tsukihime]

Gotta love over excited idiots that ruin it for the rest of us :/.

To be fair, they need to make money. Money is important. It was an opportunity to do so.


Why wouldn't they grab on to the chance?

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

To be honest there is a difference between making a honest buck and getting rich quick schemes.

people that spam pointless and amateurish games are those looking for getting rich quick and there are people that are trying to make a honest buck when they put a lot of effort in making a really good game and might be the best game of all time but it will never see the light of day from all these get rich quick schemes developers.

 

[Tsukihime]

My belief is that a good game will never be brought down by a million bad games, no matter how bad they are.


But maybe that's not how customers think.

 

[Galenmereth]

My belief is that a good game will never be brought down by a million bad games, no matter how bad they are.

But maybe that's not how customers think.

Considering how many people live on this planet, I think it'll balance itself out just fine in the end I've become extremely less likely to buy any iOS game after being burned so many times now, but that doesn't mean there aren't millions gladly spending money on games which I don't like.

 

[Aceri]

The funny thing is, there are so many people that have brought down the RM default graphics that everybody tries to have custom unique graphics so their game doesn't look like the RTP, which over time will make the RTP look like the new style.

 

[Galenmereth]

@Aceri Seeing as I won't be finished with my first game for quite some time yet, I really do hope you're right about that!